Victoria Sandwich Cake

I decided to tackle the Victoria sandwich cake again. This time was NOT going to be a half-baked attempt to recreate something that I knew worked 7 years ago. This time, however, I creamed the sugar and butter first, and I used bleached flour. The result? The second-best Victoria sandwich cake, ever! [The best one was the first one I made, because it was less burnt and more jammy].

Ingredients

150 g caster/granulated sugar

150 g unsalted butter

150 g self-raising white flour

1 tsp baking powder

3 eggs

JAM OF CHOICE!

Powdered sugar!

Method

1. Cream sugar and butter. This takes a long time, but it is extremely worth it. I suppose softened butter would be easier to cream, but I'm guessing the butter I used was around 18 degrees C.

2. Add 3 eggs and mix. You will get a lumpy mixture. The original recipe called for the use of an electric whisk, but I don't have one. I don't have many sleek kitchen utensils... so I just mix. Please, Victoria sandwich cakes were invented wayyyyy before electric whisks were [Victoria = Queen Victoria, right?]

Yes. Lumpy.

3. Add in flour one tablespoon at a time. By the last three tablespoons, you will have a really thick batter. The batter should ALMOST be cookie-dough-dense batter. The batter will have little lumps.

4. Separate batter into two pans. The whole point of the Victoria sandwich cake is its sandwich-ness. It is perfect for females to make for males, as it is a sandwich, but offers all the cakey goodness that men crave [ JUST KIDDING!].

5. Anyway, bake at 355 degrees F [or, 180 degrees C, as the original recipe says] for:

8 inch/20cm pans: 25 minutes [says the original recipe] on...the middle rack

9.5 inch pans [the pans I used]: no more than 20 minutes!! on the lowest rack

For me, I used the lowest rack and after I baked the cakes for 20 minutes, I let them sit in the oven for another 20 minutes. When I took them out, one was perfect and the other was a tad burnt. Ah well. Next time I'm putting them in for 15 minutes and letting them sit for 30 minutes.

6. Spread with jam. Warm jam is more easily spread, but cold jam is good too. Then, SANDWICH!

Victoria sandwich cakes are usually thicker, and the recipe I had was meant for 20 cm pans. So, my Victoria sandwich cake was rather thin. However, the taste, texture, and smell were not lost! It was rich, crumbly [big big big big big crumbs!], buttery, crusty on the circumference but spongy in the center, pure, fresh, and mouth-watering. It was not vanilla-y, small-spongy-holes, artificial, super-sweet, or like any of those yellow cake mixes at the store.

You will NOT find a cake like this in a box or frozen in a tin in a store in the U.S. You won't even find this in the bakery section! It doesn't taste moist like Boston cream pies-cakes, and it doesn't taste at all monotone like those *ahem* various "just add half a cup of oil and 3 eggs and mix and bake!" cake mixes. Victoria sandwich cakes are delicate, flavourful, and clean-tasting. One interesting aspect of it is that when you first bite into it, the cake doesn't feel that great; it's dry and crumbly [but not crunchy]. However, as you chew, you feel a bit of "juice" flow out of each thick crumb. Yes, this "juice" is sugary butter. How succulent.

The powdered sugar isn't necessary, but it adds a nice touch to the sandwich cake. Notice that the sandwich cake is not "yellow" or "white" or one uniform colour; it is composed of beautiful shades of caramel; it demonstrates elegance and hard work. Yes, I'm being dramatic, but this cake was definitely the most meaningful cake I've ever made [I'm... bad at making cakes...]

My sister started taking chunks out of it from 11am to 1pm. I told her to just take a slice already! She loved it.

SHE LOVED IT.

This is going to be her birthday cake! It's going to be better than last year's! It's going to be eight layers tall! [Maybe?]

Victoria sandwich cakes are also really photogenic in sunlight. Look at these pictures! No flash! Perfect!

172 Posts!

They said I couldn't do it... they said I'd get bored... they said I'd forget my password or my account would get hacked... but they were wrong! PIE-314 lives and reeks of nearly-year-old food! [The blog is only a year old on the 24th, because that's when I was done with midterm exams]

Unfortunately, there was no "they". My parents are unaware my this blog, my siblings are indifferent, and I have perhaps gained 2 frequent readers to this blog. To them: Thank you!

In 2010, I created 172 posts, and if you count the one on 1.1.11 [which is about the food in 2010, and included food I made in 2010], I had 173 posts. This means that I posted on about 47.4% [or 47.1%] of the year, with August having a post on every single day.

This year I suppose I should blog more, since I've realised that I never actually write about the economic/social/scientific aspects of food that much... Most of the time it's me making really stinky jokes and using dramatic imagery to make your salivary glands release an excess of amylase. I also ought to take better pictures and I really want to figure out how to make these uploaded pictures larger! 400x300 pixels is much too small nowadays, although you can click to get a 10.2mpx or 5.0mpx version.

Anyway, I haven't been blogging recently because I've been hanging out with BV and today I did the unforgivable act of prolonging the shelf-life of stereotypes.

I made a sandwich. For a male person.

Actually, it was a half-baked attempt, because it was only one slice of bread spread with peanut butter. Controversial or not... I'd gladly make him more sandwiches. He said he'd cook for me too, so that's cool :D.

So, here are some pictures of Chowder from Chowder. I love to watch Chowder!

Sammich!

Yes, I actually cooked today.

YES I ACTUALLY BAKED TODAY. [First time I stuck something in the oven since...lasagne in the summer?]

But what I'm baking is currently in the oven, and, besides, I want to wait it out because I'm going to make two more of them... so I'll make a cheesy [harhar!! punny hint!] blog post about them on...Sunday, most likely, because Saturday's post will be about JM's Christmas party.

Instead, I'm going to post about a meal I had about three Sundays ago, and it was quite cool because it was individually tailored!

I was at Commons, with the take-out box because I really needed to study so I couldn't eat in the cafeteria, and I decided to have a sandwich. Commons always has this really crust bread at the sandwich-making place, so I asked the dude whether I could have a sandwich made out of that kind of bread.

"This? It's been sitting here for a few weeks now... I don't really recommend it. But tell you what, let me check out the back to see whether we have any fresh bread like this."

So he goes to the back and comes back with a baguette.

AMAZING!

So, this is why Commons DOES NOT SUCK! This is evidence stating that Penn's food is not bad! This is in retaliation to people who call the dining hall servers annoying or anything negative! This dude was awesome! Instead of square wheat bread, he gave me a fresh half of a baguette!

As a side note, Commons recently decided to add a nacho bar to the dining hall, so we have a pizza place, a dessert place, a fruit bar, a salad bar, a grill, a comfort foods place, the hot and cold drinks...and a nacho bar. Sweet. Or should I say, zesty!